The snakes became talismans...

Jewels of memory

​sacred encounters
marking my path.

The brilliant banded coral
waiting for me
as I return
home
on my bike,
a warning spiral of color,
at the foot of the cement ramp
leading to our front
door.

The elegant palm viper
draped
on the school gate
her flickering tongue
reaching out

her eyes
meeting melding
with mine.

The fat bushmaster
sunning
on the white
gravel
path
to school.

The rainbow boa
I catch
in our backyard
and
hold
for a few hours
in a cardboard box
before she slips away. 

In our summers
in our pink house
in Richfield
outside of Minneapolis,
I would search our tiny backyard

for garter snakes

elegant living treasures

catch them
hold them

peer
into their silky eyes
and feel powerful

silent and beautiful.

As I grow older
the snakes come to me

in my dreams.

Signs of creative
spiritual
power

coiled and waiting
to pour through my life.

I become a snake handler.
 
In the smoky rooms
of my imagination

the snakes coil
around
my legs
spiral my arms
crown my head
slip
down
the
length
of my spine.

​Prophetic words
pour
from
my mouth
on the
flickering
forked tongues
of serpents.

In Atlanta,
in graduate school,
I walk through
Candler Park.

I call them

and there

they appear
​again
sunning in my path,

slipping along the forest floor,
sliding silently into the pond.

Every time
​
I see a snake,
I bow in its presence,
aware of a profound sacred blessing.

Our encounters are brief.

Every time

they slip
through
my grasp,

I mourn them.